Three competing speech recognition and translation technologies are vying to participate in the 'TRANSTAC project,' which will take a soldier's English, recognize the speech, translate it into Pashto and then spit it out using text to speech. All of this happens in a matter of seconds using wireless Internet and servers somewhere else in the world to do the heavy lifting.

-- US Military enlists iPhones and iPods for battlefield - A new program, Vcommunicator, is now being issued to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. It produces spoken and written translations of Arabic, Kurdish and two Afghan languages. It also shows animated graphics of accompanying gestures and body language, and displays pictures of garments, weapons and other objects.

-- MADCAT to take over translation for troops - Soldiers overseas are bombarded with foreign language images in the form of road signs, print media, captured documents, and graffiti... MADCAT provides "relevant, distilled, actionable information" to commanders and troops on the ground by translating foreign language text images accurately and automatically.

-- Phones to serve as doctors, translators - A Samsung 4G device would act as a simultaneous interpreter. The 4G device should break down communication barriers by providing translation and interpretation functions

-- Text Messaging Gets a Translator - Aa New York City startup called Transclick rolls out software that translates e-mail and text messages with just one click.

-- TOMP (Translation On Mobile Phones) - No registration nor additional software is required to access the TOMP service, and it will work on any phone that is subscribed to a UK network provider, even when roaming abroad.

-- English-Arabic translations via SMS - Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) tannounced the launch of the new Tarjim service, which allows mobile users to receive translations between Arabic and English of words or phrases.

-- SMS translator - A computerized SMS translation service called TransClick, provides quick and accurate translations between most major languages.